The Other Critics

Kauffman Digs on Meat at Beast and the Hare; Reidinger Falls In Love With Another Waiter at Grub; Stafford Digs Hudson

Photo: Brian Smeets/Grub Street

Jonathan Kauffman heads over to the Mission’s three-month-old Beast and the Hare, and says right off the bat, “You can smell the meat pride steaming off [chef Ian Marks’] menu.” He says that in one meal he consumed nine different animal species, and “The food waffled between the extremes of meat-driven cuisine today: offal artisanry and KFC’s Double Down, the exquisite and the shlubby.” He says the fried chicken is “glorious” and the “pièce de resistance” is the “ambrosia” tacos: “Marks braised veal sweetbreads, beef brisket, more veal, lamb, and pork belly together for so long that they melted together into a sort of fudge, as concentrated a source of deep flavor as a bouillon cube.” He’s not such a fan of the fritto misto, or the savory bread pudding. [SF Weekly, Earlier slideshow]

Reidinger, true to form, starts to sound a little harsh about Grub, but then ends up kind of liking it? He begins with talk of shark jumping, and says of Grub, “It’s the sort of place you wouldn’t have found on Valencia as recently as five years ago, and it suggests, to me — along with the nearby The Summit, with its matching plate-glass façade — that a basic shift in sensibility is occurring.” But what’s this about plate glass? And didn’t Bar Tartine open like five years ago? Anyway, he goes on to say, truffle oil aside, he sort of enjoyed dressing his ahi burger and mac and cheese via their burger- and mac-and-cheese-dressing bars. But ah yes, it sounds like our man Paul was won over once again by a studly young server who waited on him, who he describes as “a godlet who might have just stepped from the set of one of those Twilight movies.” But wait, Paul, we thought you liked bearded guys better than twinks. [SFBG]

Then, Matt Stafford is the first to offer a review of the recently transformed Hudson (formerly Garibaldi’s/Marzano) on College Avenue in Oakland. He writes, “An attractive new lounge area is dominated by a long, busy bar where mixologists stir up the sort of elaborate house cocktails that are beginning to enter the realm of parody: dill syrup, tobacco tincture, and flamed orange are among the ingredients…” and the food, he says, is still hit and miss. He concludes, “Hudson has real promise — once the new concept gets used to the old surroundings.”

Kauffman Digs on Meat at Beast and the Hare; Reidinger Falls In Love With